He was diagnosed with nail patella syndrome, a condition that causes injuries to nails, knees, elbows, hips and other body parts. “I was a pretty good athlete other than I would break things,” he once said about growing up. “I have a lot of trouble sitting very long.”

Hospitalized in 1988 when he was 38, McMahon was offered a joint by an orderly that helped. “I’d noticed that when I did smoke marijuana I didn’t get sick,” he said.

Thus began his campaign to find a doctor who would petition the government to allow him to be added to the IND program, which only had four patients at the time.

“I’d noticed that when I smoked marijuana I didn’t get sick.”

“Five hundred doctors refused to see me, but one wrote back and said it was an interesting case,” McMahon explained. “They finally just ran out of reasons. They conceded and we got the first shipment (in 1990). I was taking 10 Percocets a day. I didn’t take another pill after that.”

However, McMahon said the government weed was “not very good, not very potent.” He’d stopped receiving the federal stash in 2013 when his doctor retired.

Robert C. Randall, who suffered from glaucoma, was the first patient to receive federally-grown marijuana in 1975. He died in 2001. The two last patients on the program are Elvy Musikka, who also has glaucoma, and Irvin Rosenfeld, who’s afflicted with bone spurs.

At its height, the IND propram had less than 20 patients. However, in 1992, during the George H.W. Bush adminstration, it stopped admitting new patients.

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